Rasta The Artist

Rasta The Artist whose real name is Le­bani Sirenje is a Zimbabwe born paint artist who is famous for his controversial portraits of celebrities which many say the don't resemble the artists he paints. Rasta The Artist specialises mostly in portraits of dead celebrities. Rasta has painted a number of celebrities that includes late struggle icon Win­nie Madik­izela-Man­dela, current South Africa president Cyril Ramaphosa, Springboks captain Siya Kolisi, news an­chor Vuyo Mbuli and mu­si­cians Lundi Tya­mara, HHP, Prokid and Man­doza.

Rasta claims he started painting at the age of 9 whilst in primary school. Rasta The Artist was born in 1977 in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe. He lived in Pumula East and attended Igwengwe primary school in 1990 and Magwegwe Secondary School before completing his secondary education in 1994. He later moved to South Africa.

Criticism

Rasta The Artist defend his work against the criticism that it is of poor quality saying people take pictures of his unfinished paintings.

“Peo­ple do not un­der­stand the pres­sure that comes with paint­ing in
pub­lic, it’s not easy. Also, many peo­ple take pic­tures of my art­work
when they are not com­plete and make com­ments on them. Some fam­i­lies
are shocked when I send them the fi­nal art­work and see how good it
looks, con­sid­er­ing all the com­ments they see on so­cial me­dia about
the art­work.”

Siya Kolisi painting

After South Africa rugby national team (Springboks) captained by Siya Kolisi won the 2019 World Cup Rugby in the final against England on 02 November 2019 many South Africans petitioned Rasta to do a painting of Springboks's first black captain. Rasta obliged with a well received painting of Siya Kolisi.